Pasadenan benefits from breakthrough

JENNIFER BRANCH

Published 7:00 pm, Sunday, July 17, 2005

After being diagnosed with epilepsy more than 25 years ago and suffering sometimes 50 to 100 seizures a month, Handrick has taken the problem in stride and continued on with her normal life and is ready to share her extraordinary story.

"Extraordinary" is not her word. Handrick's mantra is always "it's really no big deal."

Handrick's odyssey may have begun with an incident when she was just 8 years old.

A camper was parked outside of her bay house and was plugged in to the electrical post. The children had gone in and out of the camper all day, but when Handrick touched the door handle, it delivered a shock so severe that her mother had to run out from inside and pull her 8-year-old daughter off of the truck.

None of her doctors are sure if this was the episode that triggered the epilepsy she has battled her entire life, but within a year after the shock, Kayla began experiencing petit mal and grand mal seizures. The medication prescribed by the doctors would do almost nothing to curtail the seizures.

Epilepsy is a condition that occurs in the brain. The brain is composed of millions of nerve cells called neurons, which are responsible for sending and receiving messages that accomplish everyday tasks like consciousness, movement, speech and sight. When the path of one of these messages is disturbed in some way, it can result in a brief break in some or all of the brain's tasks, which can cause seizures. Epilepsy is diagnosed if an individual has more than one seizure that begins in the brain.

During her sixth-grade year, Handrick went for a CT scan. Doctors found a tumor on the right side of her brain. This was removed successfully.

"She recovered very well," said her mother, Jessica Handrick. "After the surgery she had a homebound teacher for two months and then she went back to school. She handled it very well."

Kayla Handrick went through junior high and high school just as any other teenager.

"Her classmates and teachers knew about Kayla's seizures," said her mother, "and they all knew how to take care of her when they happened. The children were all like little nurse maids. We never hid it from anyone."

"I was the track team manager and went to dances and had boyfriends," Kayla Handrick said. "I never let it get the best of me."

Feeling down about her condition would have been easy, because even though Handrick lived her life as any other high school student, she was still in and out of the doctors offices, and on and off of medicine.

"I've taken just about every kind of medicine there is," laughed Handrick, "and every time you switch doctors, they make you go through all of the medicine you've tried before to rule it out again."

The woman, now in her early 20s, could not legally drive a car or work. This encouraged Kayla Handrick and her family to look into several treatment options that are considered last-ditch efforts in curbing seizures in individuals who are constantly battling them.

One of the treatments ultimately rejected was a callosotomy, a procedure that involves severing either part or all of the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is a structure in the brain that connects the two hemispheres, whose function is to transport messages from one half of the brain to the other. If this structure is severed, it generally greatly reduces the spread of seizures in the patient.

The risks, however, were too great.

"There was a possibility that I would have had to learn how to walk and talk again," Handrick said, "and there was also a risk of infection."

In the early 1990s, a doctor approached Handrick with the prospect of participating in a study group for VNS (vagus nerve stimulation) therapy, a new system engineered by the company Cyberonics. The risks of the system were low: a small change in the voice, tickling in the throat, cough, occasional shortness of breath.

The VNS system is commonly referred to as a pacemaker for the brain. It is a small device that is implanted into a patient's chest and delivers mild electrical impulses to the brain via the vagus nerve in the neck. A magnet swiped over the device will give an extra electrical dose to abort the seizure.

In 1991, Handrick was only the second female in which the device had been implanted and was among the first study groups that underwent tests for the VNS system. The doctors found the proper adjustment level for the system, and Handrick's grand mal seizures have completely ceased.

"I was a guinea pig," joked Handrick, "but it was really the best thing I've ever done in my life."

In 1997, the device was approved by the FDA, and Handrick now sits on the patient advisory board for Cyberonics.

"I would recommend the treatment to anyone who has seizures, it really has changed her life," said Handrick's mother. "She can work now; she worked with special education kids for Pasadena ISD for 12 years. It really has been wonderful."

Over the past 14 years, the device has been replaced three times as the batteries have worn down or technology has advanced to make the implement smaller.

"The battery that's in there now is supposed to last for at least 10 years," said Jessica Handrick.

An article in "Neurology" magazine covered a study of VNS therapy that concluded that "patients realized a 34 percent reduction in the number of seizures experienced after only three months. At 12 months, 20 percent of patients had realized at least a 75 percent reduction in the number of seizures experienced."

"It's worth it to try (the system) out," said Handrick.

Now that Kayla Handrick's grand mal seizures have completely stopped and she only suffers from mild petit mal seizures, the Pasadenan's life has taken a totally different path.

She is currently looking for work that will utilize her talents in working with autistic children. Handrick attended a conference in Massachusetts regarding autism and how to reach children that were at one time thought to be unable to communicate.

"When I'm having a seizure, I can't talk. I'm clear-minded and I know what's going on, I just can't make myself talk and it's very frustrating," Handrick said. "I think that because I know what that's like, I can help the kids. I can relate to what they're going through, can look in their eyes and kind of know what's going on in their mind."

She is also using her experience to reach out to others who suffer from epilepsy. On July 26, Handrick will be speak at a patient education conference regarding VNS therapy at the NASA Hilton at 3000 Nasa Road One.

For more information on VNS therapy, visit www.cyberonics.com. For more information on the conference, call (800) 332-1375, ext 2613.